Sectional Crisis
1854 act creating territorial governments in Kansas and Nebraska, allowing popular sovereignty and nullifying the Missouri Compromise.
What is the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
System that replaced slavery in the South with labor tied to landowners and cyclical debt.
What is Sharecropping?
Term for wealthy industrialists accused of exploiting workers and manipulating markets.
Who are the Robber Barons?
1917–1918 global conflict the U.S. entered; President Wilson proposed idealistic postwar goals.
What is World War I?
Post-1945 geopolitical struggle between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
What is the Cold War?
1857 Supreme Court decision declaring African Americans were not citizens and that Congress couldn’t ban slavery in territories.
What is Dred Scott v. Sandford?
Constitutional amendments that abolished slavery and extended citizenship and voting rights to African Americans.
What are the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments?
Belief that the fittest survive in business and society, used to justify inequality and laissez-faire policies.
What is Social Darwinism?
Wilson’s 1918 plan for post-war peace emphasizing self-determination and international cooperation.
What are the Fourteen Points?
1947 U.S. economic aid program to rebuild Western Europe after WWII.
What is the Marshall Plan?
1860 Republican elected president whose election spurred Southern secession.
Who is Abraham Lincoln?
Laws and practices that enforced racial segregation and disenfranchised Black citizens after Reconstruction.
What is Jim Crow?
Reformers and journalists who exposed corporate and political abuses in the early 20th century.
Who are Muckrakers?
1930s set of federal programs aimed at economic recovery and relief during the Great Depression.
What is the New Deal?
Movement in the 1950s–60s that fought to end segregation and secure civil rights for African Americans.
What is the Civil Rights Movement?
1863 proclamation freeing slaves in rebelling states (and redefining Union war aims).
What is the Emancipation Proclamation?
1870s–1900s era of rapid economic growth, political corruption, and social inequality.
What is the Gilded Age?
1890s–1920s movement seeking government action on social problems, regulation, and democracy reforms.
What is the Progressive Era?
1941 surprise attack that led the U.S. to enter WWII.
What is Pearl Harbor?
1960s domestic agenda focused on poverty reduction, education, and civil rights under LBJ.
What is the Great Society?
The period and policies aimed at rebuilding the South and integrating freedpeople (1865–1877).
What is Reconstruction?
1890 federal law aimed at curbing monopolies and trusts (first major antitrust statute).
What is the Sherman Antitrust Act?
1904 foreign policy statement that the U.S. would intervene in Latin America to stabilize nations when necessary.
What is the Roosevelt Corollary
Massive global conflict (1939–1945) in which the U.S. played a decisive role in defeating Axis powers.
What is World War II?
1980s conservative economic policies emphasizing tax cuts, deregulation, and market-oriented reforms.
What is Reaganomics?